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10 Dec 2016 12:25:19pm

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Of course O'merod's "nothing" is nothing but a philosophical concept. That's the point. Krauss omits the philosophical nothing in his demonstration that something can come out of nothing. But then he concludes cosmology no longer needs the idea of God, since thanks to Lawrence Krauss, we now know that something, namely the universe, can come from nothing.

But as Omerod points out, Krauss hasn't explained how the universe came from philosophical nothing. What Krauss has done is tell us that the universe was preceded and caused by the state of affairs that produced the universe. In other word, something can't from nothing, so everything is caused by something else. But we already knew that. What we want to know is what sort of something the universe came from and where that something came from.

Omerod's point is that the role of God in cosmology isn't there to account for how the universe came from the preceding state of affairs that produced the universe. God is there to account for how the whole state of affairs that constitutes the universe comes from no state of affairs at all -- from the philosophical nothing. God is there to account for the qualitative change from non-being to being, not for the quantitative change from one state of physical affairs to another. Krauss only addresses the latter change. So his claim that he's dispensed with God is premature.

Of course, it may or may not be the case that prior to the universe there was a condition of absolute nullity. And yes, it's difficult to see how science can even investigate this question. But it's a natural question to ask, and furthermore it's a rational and an important question.

So, while there may be no scientific reason to discuss the question, there's certainly no rational reason not to. That's why we have philosophy -- so we can rationally investigate these kind of questions. In fact, if you want to dispose of metaphysical speculation about where the universe came from, the quickest way to do it is to come up with a knock down argument for the eternity of the physical universe. But then you'd be committing philosophy.